Butterfly

Taro

Way back in 2005 I first posted pictures of Taro, the campus cat. Taro was a young cat then, and full of beans. Sleepy beans, but beans, nonetheless.

Last year I spotted him now and again in the science building, waiting for the elevator.

Yesterday I saw him early in the morning. There is a area of campus that has been redesigned, with water features, which had just been filled up with clean water. Taro was very thirsty. He drank and drank and drank, and ignored me completely until he had finished. When he had finished, he gave me a cuddle.

Well, actually, he allowed me to give him a cuddle. He is a cat, after all.

Taro has slowed down a bit, and doesn't look quite so lushly well-groomed as he did back in 2005. But he is still a pretty healthy-looking cat, and seems quite content with his university life, and especially with the large new water bowls the university has provided just for him.



(Sorry about the small size of the picture. My keitei camera isn't very good.)

Signs

Recently in the teachers' room at one place I work several of us found we had observed the same phenomenon, perhaps because we were using the same textbook, which had the same activity in it, which our students had the same problem with. We all noticed that most of our students cannot read or write cursive English.

What makes this odd is that a few years ago it seemed that many of our students could ONLY write cursive English. If you asked them to print something, they couldn't. They didn't know how. Obviously something has changed in the way they are teaching English at schools.

In the textbook we are using, which is for business majors, there is a section about how to format a business letter. All of us are using this as a homework assignment. The students write a business letter. They have to print it out, and then sign it.

Trying to explain the concept of signatures to students who cannot write in cursive script is really difficult, we are all discovering. In the end I devoted almost half a hour of class to getting students to learn to write (rather than print) their own names, and then to developing some sort of signature. I pointed out to them that when they get a passport they will need to sign it, so they might as well have a signature they can repeat and that they like.

One of my students yesterday was wearing a t-shirt which had a lot of English writing on it. Most of it was in cursive script, for which I was grateful, as there was a lot of bad language in there. But in large, clearly printed letters across the back was:

TROUBLE EVERY DAY

That part was not cursive.

The student wearing this t-shirt is the only girl in a class of science students. On the first day of classes this semester she introduced herself by saying that she loved meeting people and making friends. She thought people were interesting. EVERYBODY was interesting, she said.

She is a lovely kid, and I'm happy to have her in the class. All the boys love her. True to her self-introduction she is brightly interested in everything and everybody. She makes everybody feel special, including the nerds and the very shy boys. She makes them laugh. In fact, when I have the students changing conversational partners I can always tell where she is by the laughter.

"I like your t-shirt," I told her yesterday. "Especially what it says on the back." I pointed.

"Eh?" she said, and turned around. Shota, who was sitting behind her, and whose English is a little better than the others, told her to turn back again. She did, very confused. "What did sensei say?" she asked, twisting around again.

"TURN AROUND!" he said, and she did, looking worried and trying to peek over her shoulder. Shota frowned with effort and read, loudly and slowly,

"TROUBLE EVERY DAY."

There was a pause as the class digested this, then everybody laughed, including the girl.

"Who?" she asked.

"You," said Shota. "That's what your t-shirt says."

"REALLY?" she said.

If it's on their clothes, my students can't read English however it's written, apparently.

It's back!

Mr Deity is back!

Nora

It seems that I am behind the times with these. Several million people have seen the videos already. But I can't help but be impressed, and if you haven't seen Nora the pianist, you should.

Nora's dedication to her art, her intense concentration, and frequent practice has paid off. She has become a (YouTube) star - and for good reason! Like most self-taught musicians her music can be unconventional and somewhat unpredictable, but it is passionate - and she is developing a style all of her own.

Go Nora!

Funny, not funny

Yesterday one of my students came back. He had skipped two classes, and I had missed him. My classes at my Tuesday university are a bit dull this year, aside from him. He is the one really bright spark. His English level is low, which is to be expected (I have the lowest level classes ALL DAY at that place this semester, oh dear, and the baseline seems to be inching down), but that does not stop him from trying very hard, loudly, and enthusiastically. He is particularly interested in being funny in English, and often succeeds. When I correct a mistake, he repeats my correction, then repeats his mistake and wants to know, "But is it FUNNY? It's FUNNY, isn't it?" It often is.

He was particularly exuberant yesterday, and stood up when I entered the room.

"SENSEI! I'M BACK!" he shouted. "I'M HAPPY! ARE YOU HAPPY?"

"Yes, I am!" I said, and I was. He livens up the class enormously. When he is there, taking loud risks with a difficult and frightening language, the other students feel emboldened to take smaller, quieter risks, knowing they'll be overlooked in the general confusion and hilarity he causes. Nobody will laugh at them. They'll be too busy laughing at him as he hams it up.

"Where did you go?" I asked. "Why were you absent? We missed you!"

He beamed proudly.

"I ... GRANDFATHER! ... KILLED!" he bellowed.

"You what?" I asked, and he turned to one of his friends and said, "That was right, wasn't it?"

"I think 'killed' is korosu," answered his friend, hesitantly. "Maybe you mean . . . dead?"

"HA HA HA!" said my favourite student. "NOT KILLED, NO NO NO!"

"Good," I said.

"DEAD GRANDFATHER!" he said. "NOT KILLED. HA HA HA!"

He sat down.

Then he stood up again.

"WAS THAT FUNNY?"

"No," I told him. "You worried me."

"HA HA HA!"

But I was only half joking.

A couple of years ago I had a student turn up for the first time in my classes halfway through semester. He came up and told me (in front of the class) that he had been absent because his mother was murdered and the police had been questioning him.

I found this rather disconcerting, to say the least. Wouldn't I have been warned if I was going to have a murder suspect in my class? Could it really be true? But would he have made up something like that? That evening I went back over old newspapers online and sure enough, the story was there. It was a gory sort of murder.

Someone should have told me. My student shouldn't have had to. Also, it would have been nice to be a little prepared. That boy was not an easy student.* (He was not a murderer, though. A few months later the mother's boyfriend was arrested.)

So that's why my favourite student gave me a bit of a flashback yesterday. The last time someone told me a family member had been murdered, it turned out to be true.

I didn't tell him that, though.



*Well, OF COURSE he was not an easy student, the poor kid.

Theme parks

I have never been very interested in theme parks. I don't like standing in line, and most rides do not tempt me, especially the scary ones. But I may have found one that could tempt me: the Adult Theme Park Ride. If the same theme park also had the Watermaze, and it was summer, I would be a regular visitor.

I guess that means I'm getting old.

(I'm not quite ready for the Carnival Rides for the Elderly, though.)

I have been spending far too much time at the Halfbakery. In fact, I even considered joining at one point, when I was reading the variations on ping-pong and tennis. I wanted to add my own ping-pong variation.

I didn't, though, so I'll tell you about it instead. This is, in any case, a 'baked' idea, because it has been done, numerous times, in our house when I was a child. Our version of ping-pong was called blowball. To play this game you need a large number of children or adults (it doesn't really matter, although heights should be distributed evenly over both teams), a ping-pong ball, a ping-pong net, and a table. (We had a large dining room table, which sufficed.) A cloth is also recommended, to wipe the table occasionally.

You set up the net raised high enough so that the ping-pong ball can roll underneath it. You then form two teams, ranged around the table, and place the ping-pong ball on the side of the team that is 'serving.' The aim is to blow the ball off the other team's side of the table. To do this, you have to all blow like mad. You are not allowed to touch the side of the table, so what you end up with is a bunch of people with their hands behind their backs, stooped over, blowing and yelling and giggling in pretty much equal amounts. It is a good spectator sport, too. It is absurdly entertaining to see so many people exerting so much energy to make a ball move so slowly.

Blowball is a very exciting game*, and I can recommend it wholeheartedly. Also, it is perfect for wearing out a crowd of overactive children without breaking anything.



*It is especially exciting when someone faints, which I remember being not particularly uncommon during this game. It was never me, though. The nearest I ever got was seeing stars a couple of times.

Bless me

Early this morning I was woken by sudden and violent sound. I lay in the dark with my eyes wide open, and had the bewildering and incoherent impression that my face had just exploded.

My face was still there, however (although a little damp), so I played back the sound in my head, and eventually came to the conclusion that I had sneezed in my sleep.

I didn't even know that that was possible, although I suppose there is no reason why it wouldn't be. It just seems odd. I certainly don't remember it ever happening before, even when I've had a cold.

Actually, would I even know if I had done it before? Would it always necessarily wake me up?

Have you ever sneezed in your sleep, that you know of?

Why do you keep looking at me like that?

Hic!

For a while recently I wanted shishito with almost every meal. Shishito is a Japanese pepper which is often described as sweet and mild. I experience them more like a bitter and sweet combination with an occasional hot one, and even more occasionally, a VERY hot one.

The other day I found some in the bargain bin at the supermarket, probably a couple of days old, and very cheap, so I got them. I added them to my spaghetti sauce, which I often do, and because they were a bit old I thought I should use them all instead of the usual three or four.

When I bit into the first shishito I rapidly discovered that I had come across a VERY hot one. I can usually tolerate quite hot food, but not fiery, and this one was fiery. I had the usual reaction I get to fiery food. I gasped, my eyes streamed, and I started to hiccup violently. It took a few minutes to get over the experience.

Then I bit into the second shishito, and it was, if anything, even hotter. The hiccuping was even more violent and longer-lasting, and for a while I couldn't see to find a tissue to wipe my eyes.

I ate the spaghetti after that, avoiding the shishito until the end. The spaghetti was already cooling because I couldn't eat while hiccuping, and I wanted to finish it before it was disgustingly cold. Then I looked at the last of the shishito on the plate. I picked one up, hiccuped reminiscently, and decided I was over shishito. This means I cannot report on the hotness or otherwise of the rest of that packet. I threw them out. I was afraid the next one would send me into convulsions.

(The hiccuping thing is uncomfortable, but also embarrassing if I'm eating out and bite into something hot. It can get out of control, and makes me appear to be drunk and disorderly.)

The Man is a great fan of hot food, and there is a brand of Thai curry mixes that he particularly likes. I have tried two of them. They were very nice, but one of them was very hot and made me hiccup dramatically, so I couldn't eat much of it.

When I came home today The Man told me that he had gone to the website of the company that makes this curry and entered a contest – and won! He has never won anything like that before, and was very pleased with himself. In the next few days 72 packets of Thai cup ramen will be delivered to our house – thirty-six each of Tom Yum ramen and green curry ramen. That is a lot of ramen. (I didn't even know there was such a thing as Thai ramen.)

But this means we now have our emergency food supplies. If swine flu turns nasty and we are afraid to go out, or supermarkets run out of food, we can survive for several weeks on Thai cup ramen.

Hic!

Ratbags

I went back to work today, reluctantly. My week off was lovely, even if I didn't get out. I was being a good sensei. The whole point of closing the schools and universities was to not spread the virus, and staying home is the best way to achieve that, so that's what I did. Many of my students did, too, or at least so they say. (And some of them didn't.)

They seemed happy to be back, which was kind of funny after their reactions when we heard we were having the week off last Monday. All my classes today were well-behaved and hard-working. Perhaps they got bored at home.

Classes were also enlivened by the continuation of the noise problem outside my classroom. This time it was a concrete mixer, a jack hammer, and a ... I don't know the name of it. What is that handheld machine that vibrates violently and packs down surfaces? It doesn't drill or cut, it tamps, and makes a terrific noise. What are those things called?

Anyway, we occasionally got one of those, and occasionally a jack hammer, and most of the day the concrete mixer. It wasn't as constantly, overwhelmingly loud as it was the last two times this happened, but it was still disruptive.

But what I found the most odd about this was that there had clearly been no work done on the area (I'm not sure what they're actually doing, still) during the week the university was closed because of swine flu. As far as I know, administrative staff still had to work, and construction companies did not close. Why, then, did they wait until classes started again to resume their work? Couldn't they have finished it last week?

Teachers have complained every time this happened. The second time, work actually paused for a few hours. I don't know why the complaints worked one time but not the other times.

Oh, well.

The good news today was that at least in one department we do not have to make up the classes. We have to ask the students to do extra homework instead. I suspect that is due to our gaijin boss in that department, who is a charming man and more sensible than most. I think he managed to persuade them that extra classes would be both an administrative nightmare and a waste of time, as students rarely bother to turn up. (Or can't, because of their part-time jobs.) One other department has insisted that teachers hold extra classes on Saturdays, but that is a department I do not work for. The two others I work for there have not made their demands known yet, but at least for four classes I do not have extra work, and that is a good thing. It means that if I have to work Saturdays, it will not be three Saturdays, only one and a half.

At my other university I have not yet had any news.

But I wonder about starting schools and universities back so soon. The spread of swine flu victims has slowed, and that is probably because schools and universities closed. Will starting them again after a week mean the spread speeds up again? Only time will tell, but I suspect it will. I cannot see any reason why it wouldn't. It is not as if we have become suddenly immune to swine flu. But the backlash in the media has started. It is being considered 'mild,' and treated as 'normal seasonal flu.'

But it isn't normal seasonal flu. Nobody has immunity. There is no vaccine, yet. Nobody knows what will happen next. It is early days.

I do not envy public health officials. If they make the right decision, and the severity of a potential pandemic is lessened, then they 'overreacted,' because look! Nothing happened! If they did not take measures, however, and the worst happened, then they would be blamed for that, too. How can they win? It is the ultimate thankless job.

I downloaded the CDC Pandemic Severity Index slides (the first of the results on that page), and printed them for other teachers to use in the classroom if they wished. I left it in the teachers' room. At lunchtime we talked about it, and everybody wanted to know where I'd found it. It is very informative, and useful for classroom discussion. I will probably use it next week.

I wanted to take it to my other university tomorrow, too, but after my last class when I went to get it to make another copy I found that someone had nicked it.

It's not only students who can be ratbags. I'll have to print out another copy.

Honeysuckle, rain, frog, and mosquitoes

It rained today. When it finally stopped, I went out and took yet another picture of the honeysuckle. It is almost the same as the last one, except there are raindrops on it.

It's funny how honeysuckle looks so lovely in close-up photographs. In real life it is quite a messy-looking plant.


I took some more frog pictures, too. The garden seems to be full of them. They hide under the weeds and ivy most of the time. But after the rain, this one came out to dry off a bit.


Here is a closer picture of the same frog.


After the rain, the mosquitoes also came out. While I was taking pictures, I kept hitting myself around the ears.

I asked The Man about it.

"How come mosquitoes always seem to whine around ears, but they never actually bite ears?" I asked.

"Yes, they do," he said, and all my half-baked theories about mosquitoes having civilized early-warning systems flew out the window.

My lovely unexpected week off is almost at an end. On Monday I have to go back to work to get infected by my germy students.

Bicycle garden

I think I want one of these on my bicycle.

Unexpected leisure

It's been lovely to be home to enjoy the beautiful weather. Today I aired the bedding, did several loads of washing, and watched a movie, Kenny. I LOVED this movie. It was utterly charming.

I watched a movie yesterday, too. (I have a lot of movies I have had for a while and never watched.) Yesterday I watched Samsara. That, too, was gripping, but in an entirely different way. Also, the scenery is stunningly beautiful.

Perhaps I'll watch another movie tomorrow. I am rather enjoying my swine flu vacation. I think the schools and universities should stay closed for another week, just to be sure. I have a lot more movies I want to watch, and besides, I haven't started catching up on my paperwork yet.

(The Man tells me that they've just reported the first case in Tokyo.)

Another reason it is nice to be home is the smell. The honeysuckle may not be a particularly beautiful flower, but when it is blooming the scent is almost overwhelming.


In other news, a little frog spent the afternoon sitting on the handle of an old garden trowel.

You are being followed...

By . . . an elevator?



I don't know why this sign made me do a double-take, and turn around. The English is perfect. There really was an elevator behind me. But the elevator was not looming and chuckling evilly over my shoulder, about to swallow me up and take me deep down underground somewhere to some mysterious and terrible place where ... why am I even thinking like this?

Given that it was a perfectly accurate sign, why did it make the little hairs on the back of my neck stand up?


In other news, I have been sent home. Classes are cancelled all this week because of the swine 'flu outbreak. Students were unflatteringly ecstatic. The Osaka governor, on the other hand, wants to curtail my unexpected holiday.

Storks

What wonderful nests storks have!

(It must be hard to photograph the babies, though.)

Shingata flu

Oh dear oh dear oh dear...

Kobe has its first two swine 'flu cases (or rather, "new-type 'flu" - shingata influenza), which means that most likely next week I will not be working on Tuesday, my Kobe day. I say 'most likely' because although schools have been told to close for a week in the area, universities have only been 'requested' to close, so it depends on the university.

In that news story they say the second test results are not in yet, but like most English news about Japan it is a little behind. The second test was positive. Also, there were TWO kids at the same school who tested positive, and one other who has already tested positive for influenza type A and is being tested for swine flu. Another ten or so (in a school of about 1000 students) have reported symptoms, and will be tested. This is the first swine flu reported in Japan not connected with travel (at least no connection has been found, yet) so it looks like it is spreading in the community.

I have mixed feelings about this. Having time off is lovely. On the other hand, the last I heard we would have to make up the classes missed by doing extra classes at the end of semester. This means that I hope this outbreak is either contained, so that we only have to make up one week, or gets out of control, so there are so many classes to make up they give up on the stupid requirement that students MUST HAVE EXACTLY 15 WEEKS OF CLASSES NO MATTER WHAT. This recent emphasis on time spent in class is ludicrous at the best of times. Do they REALLY think that quantity equals quality when it comes to education? That more time spent sitting in class ignoring the teacher gives students a better education?

But mainly, I REALLY don't want to have to work all through the summer.

Nostalgia

Remember back in 2005 I went to Europe? And I took lots of photos? And remember recently I managed to delete a whole bunch of photos by mistake?

Well, the Europe trip photos were not amongst the ones that were deleted, because they were also on CDs. Yesterday I decided to put those photos onto my hard drive as well (CDs go bad too, you know), and went through some of them.

That brought back some memories! Also, I hadn't really gone through all of them properly before. I took a LOT of photos, and only really sorted out the ones I liked immediately after coming back. Now they are unsorted again, so I am going to sort out some I like now. They are not necessarily the same.

I like this one. This was taken in Bratislava, where the old town was in the process of being restored while I was there. Large parts of it were done, but there were some sections where old houses and buildings were still under restoration. This picture shows all three stages: Restored, under restoration, and yet to be restored.

Also, the sky is a lovely blue.


The second photo is also taken in Bratislava. (I really liked Bratislava.) They had a lot of interesting statues there in the old town. This picture shows one of them. The man sitting on the bench is not REALLY being goosed, however. He just happened to stretch his back as I took the photo.

Confusion

Something odd is happening to my iTunes. I wanted to hear the song Chiquitita by Abba, because last week I heard a radio interview in which some activist music group said they used it in their repertoire, so I fired up iTunes, and played it. There are a couple of other Abba songs on my iTunes, so I thought I'd just leave it playing and hear the other ones, but when Chiquitita finished, Tom Waits' Black Market Baby started playing.

That surely wasn't Abba! Can there be anything more surprising than hearing Tom Waits when you were expecting to hear Abba?

I've been trying to figure out the logic of this choice. Why did iTunes decide I wanted to hear Black Market Baby? I just can't understand it. Usually it goes to the next song in the list, but this time it jumped way down.

I wonder what surprise it will have for me next? We're getting to the end of the song (My baby wants to stay cold...)

OK, here we go ... Edith Piaf! Salle D'Attente. I'd forgotten I had any Edith Piaf on here! All right, if iTunes was trying to wake me up, it succeeded. (Is there some button labeled 'Surprise me" that I clicked by mistake?)

Thirty seconds to the next song. This is kind of funny, but also kind of irritating. What is next?

Andrea Bocelli! Verdi: Requiem - Ingesmisco.

All right. I'm confused. WHAT IS GOING ON? And no, I do not have Genius turned on. I just checked.

Addendum: All is explained. I had 'Shuffle' turned on. I don't know how that happened – I have never used the 'Shuffle' feature and had forgotten it existed – but at least I now know why nothing made sense there for a while.

Steep learning curve

There was a nest somewhere. I knew, because I could hear the babies yelling for food, but I couldn't see where they could possibly be. There are no trees in that direction. There are houses, but I didn't think the yelling was coming from a house. It was coming from higher up.

I thought it might be coming from here, but I couldn't see where a nest could be.


Then a sparrow flew by, suddenly, and then another, and they both vanished somewhere around the top of the power pole. The babies started yelling, and then . . .

There it was!


The babies will have a steep learning curve when it comes time to start flying. No practice for them! They won't even have space to spread their wings before their first time out. They'll have a few seconds to learn the secrets of flight . . . or not.

After I had watched for a while (and got a stiff neck from holding up the camera at an angle for so long), both parents decided to leave.

First one . . .


. . . and then the other, carrying something away.


I don't know what it was carrying away. A bit of unnecessary nest, perhaps. It doesn't look like baby poop. It looks too rigid for that. I guess it was a bit of housekeeping detritus.

Maybe today was gomi day.

Pleasant wind

Yesterday a couple of the bad guys in one of my classes asked me where I was from. I realized I had not given that information when I introduced myself at the beginning of the semester. Usually I do, but for some reason this semester I forgot.

I stared at them, and they stared at me, grinning cheekily. It was obvious they had some naughty comment prepared for me, and were waiting for my reply so they could use it. I thought of telling them to guess where I was from, but decided that would be too depressing. That conversation usually goes like this:

"America!"

"No."

"England!"

"No."

(Silence for a few seconds while the students try to remember other country names.)

"Italy!"

"No."

"Cuba!"

"Eh? Cuba? No! It's an English speaking country."

"Er . . . Greenland?"

"Huh?"

Usually the entertainment value runs out around this point, and I give up and just tell them rather than be further tormented by their appalling lack of geographical knowledge. And yesterday I was too tired to bother with any of it. I decided to tell them right away.

"New Zealand," I said.

I waited for the cheeky comment, but it didn't happen. The two boys continued to grin cheekily at me, but their grins started to look a little frozen when neither of them said anything. They glanced sideways at each other somewhat desperately. I smiled at them and waited.

Finally one of them hissed to the other, out the side of his mouth,

"New Zealand? Where's that?

"Europe," his friend muttered back.

I laughed.

"I'll give you a hint," I said. "It's not in Europe."

I continued my perambulation around the classroom to the sounds of one cheeky student beating up the other cheeky student.

---

And speaking of cheeky students, I have noticed this year the continuation of a fashion that started a few years ago but seems to have suddenly become more extreme: of boys wearing their trousers so far down you can see their underpants. It used to be that you could see the tops of their underpants, but now you can see their entire underpant-clad bottoms. You can see the LEG OPENINGS of their underpants. Their trousers are so far down the trouser waist is around their thighs. They look like they forgot to pull up their trousers after Number Twos. When they walk, they have to hobble.

I am not a fashion critic, usually. I don't normally concern myself much with what my students wear (and it's just as well, really). But whenever I see this particular fashion I get a terrible urge to take the victim aside and place him between two strategically placed mirrors, so he can see what he looks like from behind. This is a tasteless and rather unfortunate look at the best of times, but should be PARTICULARLY avoided if you are skinny, have no bottom to speak of, and have short legs. As far as I'm concerned any fashion choice that causes kind onlookers to want to offer you a wheeled trolley so you can rest your poor stumps is a Big Mistake.

This style should also be avoided if you are wearing underpants with funny Engrish on them. I am fairly sure that the 'PLEASANT WIND' emblazoned across my student's bottom was false advertising. Also, things like that make me stare and laugh. Teachers should not stare and laugh at their students' bottoms, but this particular fashion is making it very difficult for me to maintain a professional demeanor.

I wish they'd stop it.

Spot the frog

Here's a hint:


"Are you looking at me?"

Oink!

Last night I was going to try to dream up a new conspiracy theory about swine 'flu. It seems a perfect candidate for a nice, juicy conspiracy theory. I read a little, to try to figure out what the conspiracy was.

I found this, and learned that in fact 'swine 'flu' is a misnomer, and that this virus is a hybrid of bird 'flu, pig 'flu, and human 'flu.

Birds, pigs and humans, eh? I thought. How SUSPICIOUS!

I tried to think why it was suspicious, and my eyelids drooped.

Er... flying pigs? asked my sleepy brain, and I dropped off to sleep.

Today I was too busy to develop this insight any further. Sorry. But you may be interested to know that I have now caught a cold, thus proving that I am on the right track. 'They' are trying to get rid of me.

Oink!

A happening time in the garden

Remember the peony? It started dropping petals, messily, and now it doesn't look nearly as beautiful.


But somehow, close up, it still has a certain charm.


Meanwhile, the roses, which a week ago looked like this –


Now look like this:


And outside in the stormwater drain, a poppy is blooming. I was not the only one interested in the poppy.

Bang bang bang

I had a long day on Thursday. So far my Thursday classes have been easy, or at least not unmanageable, and generally everything has been going well. But on Thursday things got complicated by the university's clever decision to demolish some old bicycle sheds. Since these sheds ran the length of the building I was working in, right past the classrooms, we had large machinery practically coming in the windows all morning, along with the cheerful sounds of ripping corrugated iron and a lot of accompanying bangs and crashes and swearing, and in the afternoon the workmen used chainsaws to make the bits small enough to fit on the large trucks which then arrived with their noise. Being only one floor up meant that we got the brunt of all this.

When I had to give a test that included some dictation I was under strict instructions to read each line only twice, but I decided NEVER MIND THE INSTRUCTIONS. I read everything about fifteen times at high volume, hoping the students would be able to fill in the gaps over the roar of machinery and screeches of ripping metal, and between the crashes, bangs, and shouts coming from about three metres outside the window. It was all very silly, and probably not educationally very sound.

There was an upside, though. (There is always an upside.) My students had really unusual lessons. They were focussed. They learned to listen very, very carefully while watching my lips. They learned to shout very loudly, in English. "PARDON? I CAN'T HEAR YOU!" I taught them to shout. They got a lot of practice with that, and seemed to enjoy it.

Also, a feeling of camaraderie was fostered in the classroom. We stared hopefully at each other when the machines fell silent, and rolled our eyes collectively when they started up again after ten seconds. We shouted uselessly and shook our fists at the window. It wasn't just me getting frustrated and annoyed. We were all in it together. When things went quiet at one point, and then suddenly a workman sneezed loudly right outside the window, we all jumped, and some of us shrieked slightly. We had become a cohesive group by that time, and it was a cohesive group jump and shriek. Then we had a cohesive group laugh about it.

So it was a tiring and frustrating sort of day, but at the same time it was a fun and unexpected sort of day. In fact on balance, despite all my complaining, I suppose it wasn't really all that bad.


Absurd, but not all that bad.

Bug

This morning I sat on our front step enjoying a cup of tea and the unexpected sunshine. The forecast was for rain, and it is raining now, but for about half an hour this morning it was lovely.

While I was sitting there, half asleep still, I saw a bug moving across the ground in front of me. It was red and black, and I leaped up. A couple of years ago we had an invasion of Australian redbacked spiders in the area, and were warned about it. I had never seen one, but maybe this was it! I hovered for moment, knowing I should step on it. But instead, I dashed inside to get my camera.

By the time I came back I was more awake. In fact I was awake enough to see that although the bug was red and black, it in no way even remotely resembled a spider. I should not attempt bug identification when I am half asleep.

I took a photo anyway, confident that The Man would be able to identify it for me.

He couldn't. He thought at first it was a stink bug, but it is the wrong shape entirely. Trying to Google it did not help. It also doesn't help that these are not great pictures. The size of the bug is a bit over one centimeter, I guess. (That stone is a little less than 3 cm top to bottom, which gives some idea of scale.)

Does anybody know what it is?

Garden, up close

Yesterday I decided it was time to experiment with the camera lens I was talked into buying last year in Malaysia. It was expensive, but not as expensive as most macro lenses, and the guy in the shop managed to convince me it was the best thing since sliced bread. He had one himself, he said, and it was fantastic.

I had tried using it a bit once or twice, without very good results, and told The Man I thought I'd made a mistake buying it. His response was that I just hadn't learned how to use it properly, and it was probably fine. Yesterday I experimented in our garden, which is pretty scruffy, but with good spots. It seemed to me that a macro lens was the best thing to use – I could show the good bits, close up, and miss the scruffy bits.

I think I might be getting the hang of my new lens.

Here is the tree peony, blooming extravagantly outside our front door. Our tree peony is a few twigs in a pot most of the year, but then at this time of year it suddenly produces enormous pink flowers. It used to produce one. Then it became two. This year it was three, but in this picture you can only see two. This photo was taken with my ordinary lens.

And this is one of the flowers close up, taken with my new lens:


I spotted a ladybird on the bridal veil (thank you Kenju, for the name!), so decided to photograph that next. I didn't notice the aphids when I was taking this picture. It was only when I got the picture on the computer that I saw what the ladybird was up to:


Yummy!

(This is why gardeners like ladybirds.)


When I was about to go inside I spotted my first frog of the season, well-disguised on the wall next to some dead ivy. (Dead because I'd chopped it to stop it from strangling the rose, which is not blooming yet.)


I do not regret buying the new lens, now, and you can expect a few more close-up pictures from me in the future.

Bee

I do love these white flowers.


And I'm not the only one.

Sour kiwifruit

Last night I went to bed very early for me – ten o'clock – so that I would be well-rested for the early start I had today.

At eleven o'clock the phone rang. The Man rushed to get it, but it was too late. I was awake. I stared at my clock blearily, panicked, and leaped out of bed.

"IS IT REALLY ELEVEN O'CLOCK?" I screeched. Then I looked at the window, which was dark.

"... at NIGHT?" I tailed off, confused. "What was that?"

"Yes, it's eleven" said The Man as he came back into the room, slightly puzzled by my extreme reaction. "That was a fax."

I fell back into bed gratefully.

"Thank god for that," I said. "I thought it was eleven o'clock in the morning, and that I'd missed my first two classes, and that was the university calling to ask where I was, and I would get a really, really bad reputation, and ... "

It took a long time to fall asleep again. Paranoia is a hard thing to get rid of, especially first-day-of-classes paranoia. Today was my last first day. Nothing had gone terribly wrong yet, so I guess I was getting a bit nervous.

This morning The Man woke me at ten past six.

"I thought you set the alarm for six?" he said.

"I did!" I answered. I checked the clock, and gaped. The alarm was set to 'off'.

Then I remembered the previous night. "I guess I must have turned it off when the phone rang," I said. "That's always what I do when I get up."

"Aho," said The Man, and he was right. I was aho.

But the day went well after the unpromising beginning.

I must apologize to my regular readers for the dearth of postings about the new semester, which started last Thursday. I have been more than usually wiped out. But I will write about it soon.

In the meantime, allow me to blow you a kiss. I may as well. My mouth is still puckered up from eating a not-very-ripe kiwifruit after dinner tonight.

Soaked but unhurt

I thought for a moment I was reading The Onion.

But I wasn't.

Two men who allegedly dumped water on pedestrians from the 11th floor of an apartment building have been arrested and their bucket confiscated, police said.

Tall hedge

They had some very, very tall monks hidden away at the inn where we stayed. It is a part of their esoteric Buddhist training, to grow very tall so that they can trim the hedge, and by getting the edges perfectly straight, gain enlightenment. There are two of these monks, who work either side of the hedge, growing taller, and trimming.


The enlightenment bit happens when their heads finally pop over the top of the hedge and they get to see the person they have been working with for all these years.







(Suggestions in comments about very tall ladders will be frowned upon. Very tall ladders are no fun at all.)

Zori

At the inn at Koyasan, they provided zori for walking in the garden. They're a bit tricky with socks, but I managed.


I did not walk on the raked sand, but I did walk on the gravel.

Tasty

The cherry blossoms are in full bloom.


It is a lovely spring day, and a little windy, so some of the petals are falling.


Apparently they are delicious.

Unenlightened

The evening my friend and I arrived at the temple inn at Koyasan, we were sitting at the window of our lovely room.

This is the room.


And this is the view of the inn's karesansui garden, from our window.


We were tired after all the walking we'd done, and gazed at the garden contemplatively. After a while I said to my friend,

"Whenever I look at this kind of garden I get the same kind of feeling."

"Yes?" said my friend, looking a little apprehensive. I think she was worried that I was going to say something deep and spiritual in a clunkily gaijin way, and as she trained as a Buddhist priest she would feel she had to be understanding and empathetic.

She needn't have worried.

"I get an almost irresistible urge to make footprints in the sand," I said. "Don't you?"

My friend laughed and laughed and laughed.

"But really, don't you?" I asked. "It's like freshly fallen snow. It looks so beautiful and perfect, and after admiring it for about two minutes the next thing you want to do is to mess it up. It's the HUMAN thing to want to do."

After a pause I added,

"It's not just me, is it? "

"Well ... no," admitted my friend. "But I will never take you to our main temple. We have gardens like this."

"Don't worry," I said. "I have learned to restrain myself, over the years. I won't embarrass you by behaving like the unenlightened oaf I really am."

And it's true. I won't. But I will still THINK about doing it. And perhaps I'll actually do it when I am an old lady and can pretend (if necessary) to be slightly batty.

I'll give the gardeners a Zen moment.

Another Jizo, keeping warm

Wall

When we were walking along beside this wall I started to feel a little dizzy. When I realized what was causing it, I took a photograph.

More trees

Spooky

I went to Koyasan yesterday and today, with a friend, and we took a lot of photos. Yesterday the weather was quite good (although cold), and today it rained, and was misty (and cold). This is my favourite photo so far.

It's that time again...

Jizo

Jizo statues in the garden at Sanzenin Temple

Mini-cardigan

I completely forgot I'd put that cardigan into the washing basket. I usually handwash wool knits, and I certainly don't put them in a tumble-dryer, at least not on purpose.